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‘No official role’ for Vancouver at Sochi, IOC’s Dick Pound says

City delegation getting access to Olympic Games officials ‘a long shot’

‘There is no official role for Vancouver at the Games. I don’t know whether it is a good choice of taxpayer funds,’ said Canada’s International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound.

Photograph by: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU
, AFP/Getty Images

Vancouver can send a delegation to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia to lobby for including sexual orientation in the Olympic Charter, but that doesn’t mean the International Olympic Committee will meet with them, a senior IOC member said Thursday.

Dick Pound, Canada’s representative on the committee, said the Vancouver delegation headed by Coun. Tim Stevenson won’t have any special status at the Olympics and will likely have to travel and buy event tickets as tourists.

That will make it more difficult for the three-member group to achieve any meaningful results as it tries to lobby both the IOC and Russia to protect and enshrine the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender athletes.

The IOC also said that “in principle, the IOC doesn’t invite political representatives from previous host cities to attend the Games” and that any such representation from Canada would have to be granted by the Canadian Olympic Committee.

A COC spokesperson said it did not know whether the delegation has asked for access to its accreditation and ticketing services.

However, Pound said he doubted the COC would comply because it would mean fewer tickets for coaches, families of athletes and sponsors.

Pound said he has not been approached by the eight-person steering committee that is organizing the trip in February by Stevenson, an openly gay councillor, and two others, former Vancouver Organizing Committee media spokesperson Maureen Douglas and Dean Nelson, the organizer of the Vancouver 2010 Pride House, the first ever built.

“There is no official role for Vancouver at the Games. I don’t know whether it is a good choice of taxpayer funds,” he said. “I’d be inclined to ask why they aren’t dealing with countries where there’s a much greater problem, such as Malaysia, where you can be put to death for being a homosexual, which is far harsher than anything in the Russian law.”

On Wednesday, city council backed off a plan to accept donations from two well-known members of the development community who offered to pay Stevenson’s way. Instead, the city said it was more appropriate that taxpayers fund his trip. The money Bob Rennie and Peter Wall and others contribute will be used to pay the way of the other travellers.

On Thursday Stevenson met with Dr. Artem Tcherkassov, the honorary consul for the Russian Federation, which has been closely watching the growing worldwide backlash to new laws banning the promotion of homosexuality. A press release from Mayor Gregor Robertson’s office stated “Tcherkassov expressed gratitude for Vancouver sending a delegation as the most recent Olympic Host City, and offered to provide logistical assistance where possible to Vancouver’s representatives.”

The trip is being organized with the help of Canadian Olympians Marion Lay and Bruce Kidd, who have offered to help open doors to important IOC members and Olympians. Lay is the partner of Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem, one of five people who will oversee the financial disbursements from the donation fund.

The four other members are city clerk Janice McDonald, Patrice Impey, the city’s chief financial officer, Kidd and Darren Stolz, a former member of the Canadian Paralympic Committee.

Ballem on Thursday said she didn’t believe she was in a conflict of interest because of Lay’s involvement in the city initiative. She reaffirmed that belief Thursday with an opinion from the city’s legal department, which supported her.

Douglas, who is also openly gay, said the group knows it will be hard to convince the IOC to change its charter, but the effort still must be made because of the principal.

“Sometimes it is not about what’s in the paperwork but it’s in the principal of the spirit of what’s going on,” she said. “We know we won’t be coming home with some revised charter with fresh ink on it. It is a process.”

Stevenson said Lay and Kidd are trying to use their Olympic connections to line up meetings with any IOC official they can, including IOC president Thomas Bach, to remind them that for gay and lesbian athletes, “the sports world is quite homophobic.”

“The reason we’re wanting to meet them is in the Olympic Charter sexual orientation is not explicitly named. They talk about human rights but they don’t talk explicitly about sexual orientation,” he said.

“For GLBTQ athletes that is very disconcerting because as you know the sports world is quite homophobic. So we’re wanting to ensure it is enshrined in the Charter. Interestingly, the Paralympics does explicitly state sexual orientation.”

But Pound said Bach already met last month met with members of the gay and lesbian community in Paris. Getting access to the IOC membership at an Olympics for political lobbying is a long shot, he said.

“It does not happen often and it is unlikely to succeed,” he said. “So why they (IOC) would talk to Vancouver as opposed to someone else I don’t know,” he said.

Pound, a lawyer, also said he was surprised that the city would accept donations from developers to fund the trip.

“It is still coming from developers who are doing business with the city. I would think the red light would be going ‘beep beep beep,’” he said.

On Wednesday, Ballem told council that the city’s legal department had provided an opinion that the donations did not put councillors in a conflict. However, in an effort to distance them from the perception of conflict, Green Coun. Adriane Carr recommended the city pay Stevenson’s way out of taxpayer funds.

Stevenson also strongly objected to the question of whether he could be impartial when either Rennie, the city’s top condo salesman, or Wall come before him in future with development-related business.

“That is a rude question. You are saying I am willing to be bought off. I am not willing to be bought off,” he said.

Pound said it will take more than this trip for the IOC to consider adding sexual orientation to the Olympic Charter.

“Certainly not in the short run. If you wanted to get to that stage, which I think is a big stretch, you’d have to get a pretty good backswing organized and go around the world and get national Olympic committees to agitate for it as part of their Games preparations,” he said.

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